My name is Mary Haga. On many mornings, you would find me looking very much like the lady on my pages. Oh, the joys of retirement! (Well, only sometimes, since I work part-time.)

I am a native Virginian who spent 31 years teaching third grade in a rural Virginia public school system. The first 26 years were spent teaching in a primary school with only grades K - 3. The last few years were spent in a K - 6 situation due to the closing of some older schools and the building of new ones. I must say that I preferred the primary school setting. Having older students around made the whole school climate different.

During the last 15 years of my teaching experience, I had the use of a computer in my classroom, first an Apple IIe and more recently PCs. I have enjoyed the computer for my own personal use as well as showing children what they could accomplish by using the computer. There sure have been a lot of changes since the days of the Apple IIe. I also had the opportunity to train other teachers in the use of computers.

I have continued to teach, but not in the public school. I am working for a private computer school. Most of my workday is spent working with preschool or school-aged children on computers. As this is an enrichment experience for them, it is a pure teaching experience for me. There are none of the record-keeping, meetings, and other non-teaching chores that burned me out as a classroom teacher. This job is a joy!

My major reason for starting this website was to learn how to do it. (Have to keep the old brain working...use it or lose it!) But I hope that teachers will find my site useful as well. I am especially interested in finding websites or creating things that will work for primary teachers. I was frequently frustrated by the things I found when searching for my own use in the classroom. The visuals would be excellent, but the reading level would be too much for young children to handle on their own. So I am going to be looking for existing websites that primary teachers can use and, as my skills develop, I will try creating things myself.

Updates may be a little slow to appear since I am working again. Keep checking back or sign up for the update notification. If you have good links to share or just want to comment on this site, please email me. I would enjoy hearing from you.

Links to Other Stuff

From a Mountain Hollow - My Blog
Mary's Digital Scrapbook
Scrapgraphics @ Teachers' Mentor
Meet the Cats
Cathedral Between the Creeks - This was originally a coding exercise for a class I was taking, but it turned out to be a good description of a spring day where I live.